Bewildered in Atlanta

On the purposeful indifference of the second season of Donald Glover's acclaimed series

Donald Glover as Earnest Marks.
(Image credit: Guy D'Alema/FX)

I have a confession to make: I don't really get the second season of Atlanta.

The first season of Donald Glover's show mined the comedic burden of dealing with people who demand your attention. But as Earn, a homeless Ivy League dropout, tries to manage his cousin's rap career, the show's sophomore season, called Atlanta: Robbin Season, charts the humiliation of being ignored. Earn droops under the world's indifference, and — to this viewer at least — it felt like I was drooping under the show's. I'm on record as truly loving Atlanta's first season, but Robbin' Season is so hermetic it feels like it's shutting me out.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.